


A Shot in the Dark

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: There's Nothing Quite Like It [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-26 17:11:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaegar means hunter. They should have named the mechs something else, because as more Jaegars rolled off the line and their pilots became rockstars, it all turned into a game. Humanity was winning, and like it always did, it made them cocky. They stopped seeing themselves as guardians and started seeing themselves as superstars, just like the media said they were, and maybe that was why everything went tits up in the end.</p><p>The thing was, there didn't look like there was going to be an end to it, and so many of the Jaegar pilots were so suited to their celebrity. Everything made sense, everything was golden, at least until it wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Shot in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> FINALLY FINISHED NOW I CAN GO CRY IT OFF 
> 
> Please enjoy :)

_It's a warm September evening when the first beast makes land._

_It hits Seagard, not the biggest or most important or even the loudest city on the western coast - those honours belong to Oldtown and Lannisport - and it takes six days to take it down. Half the Air Force is taken out in the effort, and in the end it takes a nuke that leaves Seagard uninhabitable._

_They call it a kaiju - it's an Ibbenese word, means great beast. They celebrate its destruction, even though thousands of people died and one of the biggest urban areas in the country was destroyed beyond all salvaging._

_They put its skull in a museum in King's Landing - not even the National Museum of Maritime History in Riverrun, where the damn thing should go considering everyone who did manage to escape Seagard seems to have ended up in Riverrun, since Riverrun is regional capital and Governor Tully had the final say on the nuke because they were his people that were dying and dead._

_They forget._

_Then the next one comes._

* * *

_The first Jaegar - another strange word, this one from the Old Tongue that's only spoken way up north - is built in time to take out the third kaiju, after Pyke is decimated and what few Iron Islanders could escape have, like the Seagarders, found refuge inland in the Riverlands._

_It was cobbled together in barely more than a year, and it's piloted by Brynden Tully and Gerion Lannister. It's raw and nuclear and called Black Gold, and it takes a beating but it wins, and suddenly there's hope._

_Jaegar means hunter. They should have named the mechs something else, because as more Jaegars rolled off the line and their pilots became rockstars, it all turned into a game. Humanity was winning, and like it always did, it made them cocky. They stopped seeing themselves as guardians and started seeing themselves as superstars, just like the media said they were, and maybe that was why everything went tits up in the end._

_The thing was, there didn't look like there was going to be an end to it, and so many of the Jaegar pilots were so suited to their celebrity. Everything made sense, everything was golden, at least until it wasn't._

* * *

_There were dynasties of Jaegar teams - the Tullys and the Greyjoys from the Riverlands, the Martells from Dorne, the Tyrells and the Hightowers in the Reach, the Starks and Mormonts and Manderlys in the North._

_Maybe there was something in the water up there, or maybe it was just they were kind of inbred because they didn't mix south of the Neck much. Either way, there always seemed to be a lot more teams coming out of the North than anywhere else._

_The Mark I pilots begin coordinating the program, Bryn and Gerry and Doran and Leyton and Maege becoming Marshals Tully, Lannister, Martell, Hightower, and Mormont, wearing uniforms with stars on their shoulders and controlling the rapidly constructed but exquisitely engineered Shatterdomes at Cape Eagle, Lannisport, Oldtown, Starfall and Bear Island._

_All of them had family in the Jaegars, all of them lost family at some point. All of them had been someone before the first creature climbed out of the sea, but this was what they were now._

_They trained the new generations of pilots, and co-ordinated the ongoing fight against the kaiju. They were good, but it only took about fifteen years before humanity's winning streak came to a grinding halt. The kaiju were smarter than anyone gave them credit for, learned how to fight the Jaegars and they started wining._

_And the pilots, the rockstars, humanity's great hope, they started dying in droves._

_The worst cases come within two months of each other._

_The Starks up North ran a three Jaegar drop against the biggest kaiju to come up yet, just south of Sea Dragon Point, all three of their teams - Ned and Sansa, Cat and Robb, Jon and Arya - and lost all three Jaegars, and the whole family except the two girls. The Old Wolf, Rickard Stark, old school Mark I god, who'd piloted with Maege when her brother died, pulled both his living grandsons out of the Academy, and cut both girls from the programme, hid them away at the old Stark place in Winterfell, hundreds of miles inland in the safe zone, despite their protests._

_Then, down south, not quite seven weeks later, the Tyrell siblings - all four compatible in any combination, in either of their Jaegars, probably the most effective team in the world._

_The most effective team in the world, that is, until Loras and Garlan were killed, and Margie was torn right out of the pod, and Willas was left with electrical burns covering most of his body and a right leg so badly injured that it had to be amputated._

_It only takes six years for nearly the entire Jaegar fleet to be wiped out._

_It only takes six weeks for Parliament to rule that a wall will be sufficient to fight a threat that is worsening every time it arises._

_That's why everyone jumps to Lannisport. Bryn Tully calls in his old friends, tells them to gather what's left of the programme for one last shot._

_The wall is a piece of shit, anyways. It's not going to work._

 

* * *

 

"It's got medical applications," Sansa says, eyes following the path of Arya's tennis ball as it bounces ceiling-wall-hand-ceiling-wall-hand. "I think so, anyways. Doctor Mallister agrees, and he was wondering if you'd help with the numbers. You've always been good with them-"

"- and I understand the mechanics of Drifting better than just about anyone?" Arya agrees, wincing when she catches the ball. She has circuitry burn scars all over her hand - and down her arm, and across her back and really painful looking ones on her boob, on the opposite side to Sansa's own. Arya's quietened down a lot since the Event, Sansa thinks, has done nothing but study, as if becoming the best engineer in the world will mean Granddad will relent and stop being a complete idiot about letting them back near a Jaegar.

She's well on the way to becoming the best. She always was a genius with anything at all to do with figures, always had a natural flare for engineering and things.

She wanted to be an architect, before the kaiju. Sansa remembers that. It always struck her as unfair that nobody could do anything that they wanted to do once the kaiju appeared, nobody who gave a damn about anything.

Sansa wanted to make clothes. Beautiful clothes, clothes that people all over the world would want to wear. Instead of sewing cloth she learned how to sew people, using the stretches of time between drops to study medicine. She's a doctor, officially, just because she wanted to be useful and wanted to be something more than just the pretty Stark girl who was only in a Jaegar because _someone_ had to share the neural load with Dad. She had to do something to keep herself from going mad, something other than endless hours in the gym and sparring with Dad and Robb, something other than thinking about kaiju.

Now, she just wants to see Arya smile again and to get Dad out of her head for more than ten minutes in one go, and to sleep a night through without waking up screaming in pain.

That's the main reason she and Arya share a room now, for the first time in about fifteen years. At least with it soundproofed, it's just the two of them who have to get up. It didn't take much to make Granddad give them the ensuite room, so they don't even have to wake anyone else to throw up in panic.

It'd be cool if Rickon smiled again, too, now she thinks about it. Bran seems okay with having been pulled out of the Academy - he'd pretty much aged out, anyways, was mostly there helping the younger students deal with the Drift because he was such a natural, had only been hanging around waiting on Rickon to age up in the vain hope that they'd get more funding - but Rickon just seems to get angrier and angrier every day.

Mum and Jon were the only ones who could ever really calm him down when he threw a tantrum. Sansa doesn't even know where to start.

 

* * *

 

"I want to show you something," Arya says one morning while they're washing up after breakfast - Granddad's out the back garden with Bran and Rickon, ignoring the blinking light on the answer machine. He's got something like thirty messages between it and his mobile, most of them from Bryn and from Maege Mormont, but some from Doran Martell and Gerry Lannister and, Sansa suspects, Aeron Greyjoy.

Granddad would never, ever admit it, but he really likes Aeron. Most people do, and even if they don't they have an insane level of respect for him - who wouldn't respect the guy who pulled himself out of his wrecked Jaegar and got to shore with his brother's corpse while a kaiju rampaged?

What Arya wants to show her, it turns out, is an email from Uncle Bryn - he wants them to come down to Lannisport, the last operational Shatterdome (the one closest to the Breach, too, Sansa knows), wants to talk to them about a project he's working on.

It's the cagiest thing Sansa's ever read, but she's gotten similar emails from friends who're still with the programme since Lyn and Jorah went down two months ago.

Something big is happening in Lannisport - officially, the last remaining Jaegars have been moved there because there's only enough funding to keep one Shatterdome open, but Sansa's not stupid. Where Arya sees numbers, Sansa sees patterns, and there's a pretty obvious pattern here.

"How're we going to get there?"

 

* * *

 

They tap into their trust funds. They leave a long letter for Granddad and Bran and Rickon - Sansa writes it, she's always been better with words - and they take the train, first to Riverrun and then on to Lannisport. It takes three days, and they sleep on the trains because that's harder to trace, and they know Granddad's going to do everything he can to get them back.

They've got their rucksacks with them, the same ones that they brought from the 'dome on Bear Island once the medical staff let them leave and Granddad began hustling them back to Winterfell. Sansa's wearing Dad's jacket, Arya's wearing Jon's, and they can see people staring but they don't care.

Everyone knows who they are. They were all over the news, after all, and Sansa's hair is enough to mark them out regardless, because how many other people would have a waist-length flaming ginger braid and a Lady Winter flight jacket? How many other women are clipping six feet tall with circuitry burns up the side of their neck and down their arm?

Sansa's show up more than Arya's own, because Sansa's paler and doesn't spend most of her time outside in bitter wind in tank tops, fitting the house with solar panels and miniature wind turbines, because just because there are giant aliens bent on destroying the world coming out of the Sunset Sea doesn't mean that enviromental conservation is unncessary.

Arya has never for a moment believed that humanity isn't going to win. She can't afford to think that, because if she does, it means Mum and Dad and Robb and Jon and all the others died for nothing, and she refuses to even consider that.

Uncle Bryn is waiting for them when they get off the train at Casterly Exchange, and he's got Gerry Lannister with him - there was always speculation about them, the first pilots to ever Drift together, closer to each other than to either of their families - and when they try to take Sansa and Arya's rucksacks, Arya's surprised that it's Sansa who nearly bites Gerry's hand off.

"I'll carry it myself," she grits out, swinging it up onto her good shoulder and sliding on her sunglasses, and because she can't stand being rude - Sansa is many things, but rude has never been one of them - she tacks on "thanks, though," and nods sharply.

Sansa's held onto that rucksack even when they tried to take it away with the rest of Robb's stuff, just like Arya's had hers since the day they came to clear away Mum's things. 

Bryn and Gerry exchange a look, shrug, and motion for Sansa to lead the way - there's a jeep waiting at the edge of the platform, right in the middle of everyone's way, and Sansa stomps over in her unlaced boots, hands stuffed into her pockets, walking exactly like Dad, and Arya follows her feeling a little sick.

 

* * *

 

It's both simple and impossible being in the Shatterdome, because it's home - bare concrete and steelwork, older pilots pretending they're not dying of radiation poisoning and young ones pretending they're not broken from seeing their partners killed in such brutal ways - and it's not, because this is Lannisport, not Bear Island or even Cape Eagle.

It's still the 'dome, though. There are still dozens of people milling about in uniform, still the constant screech of heavy-duty power tools, the rumble of engines, the war clock on the wall, the stink of death that everyone tries so hard to ignore.

There's still the Jaegars. Only a few, now, but they're still there, battered and bruised in that way only metal can be, and some of the most beautiful things Sansa's ever seen.

 _Once we have Jaegars, we have hope._ Dad said that once, the second time he and Sansa ever fought a kaiju, and it still sticks with her. Everyone's been panicking since the programme went into decline, hysterical at the thought of there being nothing but a wall between them and the monsters, but Sansa knows better. She remembers what Dad told her.

The handful of Jaegars that  _are_ here are legends, every one of them - their pilots are heroes, gods, the best of the best, the fittest who survived everyone else who stood toe-to-toe with a kaiju.

There are no surplus staff here - everyone in this 'dome serves a purpose, and that's something that jars almost as much as the absence of Dad at Sansa's side. Families were raised in the 'domes, but not this one. Someone has scrawled  _the end is nigh_ on a wall, and Sansa laughs at that and points, draws Arya's attention, and they're still grinning when Gerry and Bryn begin pointing out the teams who've lasted this far.

Sansa knows all of them, at the very least by reputation - the western coast has become a very small place the past while, and there's nothing better for getting to know people than fighting giant alien monsters from under the sea alongside them. Probably the team she knows least are Ned Dayne and Trys Martell out of Starfall, because they're young and weren't riding when she last stood in a 'dome. Aurora Scarlet is the single Mark V in existence, the last Jaegar to be built before the assembly lines were shut down and converted to steel fabrication assemblies for the wall.

Granddad did his best to keep them from even watching the news, but Sansa knows enough. Between Arya's research for university and her own insatiable need to  _know_ , they've kept up with everything, of course, but keeping up with the news from afar and actually being in a Shatterdome and hearing it along the grapevine are two entirely different things.

Bryn is smiling, too, as he leads them past the Greyjoys and the affectionately nicknamed Rising Damp - real name Sea Bitch, which isn't much better. Sansa met them, once, and Robb was friends with Theon, but they've always kept to themselves so she doesn't know them very well. There were so few who got off the Iron Islands that those who did fell back into their old religion, and when they did that they became kind of... Insular. They're good at what they do, though, so there's never a question of anyone not putting up with their quirks. They watch as Sansa and Arya pass, matching smirks and artfully untidy hair and elaborately tooled knee-high boots all meant to intimidate and failing just a bit.

Everyone here worth intimidating has faced down more than one kaiju. A little posturing isn't going to freak them out.

It's a relief to see Maege and Aly - the Mormonts were friends, maybe more, that almost-family that came from saving the world together, and from living in such close quarters for such a long time. Dacey's off somewhere with Barty, but Aly promises that they'll swing by together after dinner to catch them up on all the gossip, and it feels so normal that Sansa almost feels like crying.

"Welcome home," Maege says, pulling them close, and she smells like motor oil and woolly jumpers and sea air. "It's good to have you back."

Sansa thinks that the welcome is more for Arya than herself - Arya always excelled at everything involved in piloting, the robotics and engineering and fighting and tactics, a prodigy in all the ways that mattered. It makes sense that they want her back. She could be useful - if nothing else, Arya has a knack with people that means she'll probably find someone to pilot with easy enough.

Bryn's been cagey about why they're here, but Sansa's not stupid. Why else would they want them back? There's something happening, that's why everyone's here at Lannisport. That's why all the last active Jaegars are here, Aurora Scarlet and Sea Bitch and Kodiak Queen all looking better than they really should, all being upgraded before Sansa's very eyes.

"What is there for us here, Bryn?" Sansa asks once they've said their goodbyes to Maege and Aly and been ignored by the Scarlets and the Greyjoys again. "Why did you want us to come down from Winterfell?"

Bryn's smile is bitter and sad, and Gerry's is resigned.

"We've got something to show you."

 

* * *

 

Arya's face lights up when she sees it.

They've cobbled together a Jaegar, somehow, although Sansa's reasonably sure all the parts are Mark III, or at least modelled after Mark III. There are bits of Lady Winter in her arms and legs, River Grey in the shape of her conn pod, and her torso seems to have been taken entirely from Ghost Wolf. Sansa hasn't seen Arya so excited since before the Event, and she only understands maybe a third of what her sister is asking Bryn and Gerry and the techs, but if only for the smile on Arya's face she's glad that they came to Lannisport.

"How did you model them so closely?" Sansa asks Gerry as Arya and Bryn exclaim over an apparently incredible number of engines for something or other. It's uncanny how similar the components of this new Jaegar are to their three, and Sansa's scars itch at the memory of when last she was the one controlling those limbs. There's even a scar on the left thigh, she remembers getting that, it hurt like a bitch she felt the pain through the Drift Dad walked with a limp after that no no no-

 

* * *

 

"She had a panic attack," Arya says bluntly. "You should have warned us, Bryn. Sansa's not as strong as she wants everyone to think, you  _know_ that."

Sansa's asleep now, in the tiny single room she's been given across the hall from Arya's new accomodation. She had to be sedated, because seeing Lady's remains cannibalised like that broke her control. Bryn  _should_ have known better than to just launch that on them. 

"She's not going to be ready," Bryn sighs. "We were hoping you two might be compatible, that you could pilot together. We'll have to stage trials-"

"Fuck you," Arya says, suddenly furious but clenching her fists to hold it. " _Fuck_ you, Sansa's not  _not ready,_ she was just confronted with something she hasn't had a chance to deal with because she's had to handle Granddad being a  _complete_ asshole and Rickon being an annoying little bastard, and she has been  _incredible,_ but you just pushed her around a corner and said  _hey, this is where you felt your dad die!_ and expect her to be  _okay_ with that? What the  _fuck,_ Brynden!"

"That's Marshal Tully to you, Ranger."

Arya spins on her heel and snaps sharply to attention, gritting her teeth to tie down the impulse to thump Gerry Lannister as hard as she can in his pretty face. His niece and nephew, twins, were the last to go down - they took the kaiju, a Cat III near Crakehall, down with them - so how the hell is it that he can be so cold about this?!

"You have not piloted a Jaegar in nearly four years, Ranger Stark," he says coolly, clasping his hands behind his back. "Your degrees in engineering and robotics are admirable achievements, but neither they, your trauma, nor your knowledge of your sister's psyche give you the right to disrespect a senior officer to this degree. Be thankful that you're not officially back in the ranks just yet, or you  _would_ be punished for this."

Arya hears her jaw pop with the effort of not fighting back.

"You will report at oh-eight-hundred hours for trials, Ranger Stark," he says. "Sharp."

As soon as he's gone, and out of earshot, Arya rounds on Bryn.

"You can't have compatibility files drawn up. You  _can't_ have run the algorithim in the past fifteen minutes."

"We didn't," he admits. "We worried that one or the other of you would prove incapable, and we worried that you wouldn't be compatible, so we ran it for both of you before we even asked you to come down."

"You complete and  _utter_ -"

"Enough, Arya," he says so quietly that it confuses her. "If Sansa's up to it, bring her down to the mess for dinner, otherwise leave her to sleep some more and come down yourself."

 

* * *

 

"Maybe he's right," Sansa admits, willing her hands not to shake as she walks through the mess hall with Arya. "Maybe I'm  _not_ ready, Arya - I mean, you didn't go to pieces-"

"Because I didn't get it," Arya points out, glaring daggers across at Bryn and Gerry Lannister where they sit with the other marshals, heads together. "I didn't see the pattern until you did - I just saw the engines, Sansa, the upgrades."

She still feels kind of sick, can hear Dad screaming as Invader's teeth sank into Lady's thigh, flashes of pain that were both his and hers but in the end entirely his when Executioner ripped half of him out of the conn pod... But she has to be stronger than this. Arya needs her to be stronger than this, to be more like Arya herself is.

"I can still help, even if I can't pilot," she says, aiming for cheerfullness and knowing she misses it by the way Arya's eyebrow curls up. "Come on, Arya, I'm one of the best trained emergency surgeons in the country, even if I don't have that much experience of anything but car crashes and broken bones, and I've studied the physiological effects of Kaiju Blue in more detail than anyone outside the K-Science department. I  _can_ help here, probably."

"I'm not piloting that Jaegar with just some random hotshot fresh out of the Academy, Sansa," Arya insists. "That's- that's not just a normal Jaegar. Mum and Robb died in that damn conn pod! Bryn can't just expect me to be cool with letting any random asshole in there with me, never mind-"

"Never mind into your head?" Sansa asks gently, biting her lip. "I get that, Arya, I do, but if I can't, and you know Granddad's probably completely locked down everything back home so Bran and Rickon aren't going to get here in time for whatever it is Bryn and the others are planning."

"They want to attack the Breach," Arya says. "Bryn told me, while you were out. They're going to bomb it, and they need a team of Jaegars to defend the Dornish boys while they carry the payload."

Sansa stops, blinks, and starts walking again.

"Didn't that fail before?"

"Exactly," Arya says grimly. "But they must know something we don't know."

People are staring at them - everyone knows who they are, because between how much Sansa looks like Bryn and the jackets that neither of them saw fit to surrender, they're pretty damned singular - but Sansa doesn't care. All she cares about is that right now, she's just about as useless as 

 

* * *

 

Sansa agrees to come and watch the following morning, when Arya's supposed to be trying out these precious co-pilot candidates of Bryn's. The training rooms are different to the ones in the Bear Island Shatterdome - there, there were heavy wood panels on the walls, and bare flourescent strip lights on the ceiling. Here, there are mirrors along one side and frosted glass windows along the other (which seems impractical to Arya, but she didn't design the place, did she), and all the leather-bound mats on the floor are bright, bloody red.

She feels very small, in this high-ceilinged room with a fighting staff in her hand and a troup of big, burly assholes standing opposite her, clearly wondering why the fuck  _they_ were auditioning to be  _her_ partner. She's glad that Sansa was there, sitting with her back to the glass, legs folded and a heavy textbook on kaiju physiology, borrowed from someone or other, sitting open in her lap as she highlighted what were doubtless things to show Arya later, things that might help. She's not saying a word, doesn't seem to be watching what's going on, but her just being there helps steady Arya - she's not nervous, she's kind of pissed off, really, because these assholes are  _clearly_ not her type of co-pilot, but she knows Sansa will give her that  _look_ if she kicks off so she keeps a lid on it.

Bryn and Gerry Lannister are standing on the steps at the far end of the room, behind Arya, and it's them who'll have the final say on who steps into her conn pod with her. She hates that more than anything, that this isn't her decision to make no matter that it's her that'll have to share not just all that's left of half her family, but also  _her head_ with some meathead stranger with more testosterone and muscles than sense.

Arya doesn't need someone to help her fight. She's always been plenty good at fighting all on her own - she was hitting their brothers with big sticks almost before she could walk. She needs someone to keep her steady, to remind her that she's better than that and that there are more ways to fight that to beat the kaiju to toxic blue gunk.

Maybe that's mixing her metaphors, she thinks as she beats one recruit over the head with her staff. She doesn't care. She's both angry and bored, and only the way Sansa rolls her eyes and purses her lips and eyes each competitor critically as they step onto the mat keeps her sane.

"None of them are suitable," Sansa says, just loud enough that everyone in the room will hear but just disinterested enough that it seems as if she's passing an idle comment to Arya, when she comes over to get a drink from the bottle in Sansa's outstretched hand. "They honestly seem to think that it's about  _beating_ you. Not that any of them will, of course, because they seem to think that this is the same as boxing or street brawling-"

"If you're so sure of yourself, why don't you show us?" one of them calls, and Arya nearly throws herself down the room to claw his eyes out - there's not a single female recruit in the mix Bryn and Gerry picked out, and she  _knows_ that that's wrong, that it was skewed because Jon was her co-pilot so they've assumed she needs a male co-pilot. "Why don't  _you_ show us what we're doing wrong?"

"Nah, don't push her," his buddy says, nudging him - they're ratty looking bastards, clearly related and probably, Arya's fury tells her, very inbred - and grinning stupidly. "She might faint again."

Sansa rises fluidly to her feet, shrugs off Dad's jacket and then, as she kicks off her boots, pulls off her jumper.

The sneering and chatter dies down when she reveals her scars. She's only wearing a sports bra - practical, navy, but edged with bright pink because this  _is_ Sansa, after all - and the worst of the scars, the ones on her ribs and around her back and on her upper arm, they're clear for everyone to see. Arya wore a tight t-shirt that hides her scars without limiting her movement, but then again, Sansa's always been more comfortable with the burn marks and her body than Arya, which is kind of weird, in a way.

"Might I borrow this?" Sansa asks the mouthier git sweetly, tugging his staff from his hands and smiling. "My sister and I don't have all day, you see - thank you."

"Ranger Stark," Bryn warns, but Sansa simply smiles before taking her position on the mat and bowing her head. " _Ranger Stark,"_ he says again, and Sansa wonders how much he's seeing Sansa and how much he's seeing their mother, just like Granddad always seemed to see more of Lyanna, killed in the first attack on Seagard, than her.

"You wouldn't have me turn down a challenge, would you, Marshal?" she asks, eyes wide and mockingly innocent, and Arya's anger evaporates in the sudden mad desire to fall down and laugh until she cries. "I  _am_ a Jaegar pilot, sir, and I  _am_ a likely match for Ranger Stark - why shouldn't we at least give it a shot, sir?"

It's easy, this, with Sansa - nothing ever was before the Event. They fought constantly then, bickering and squabbling enough to drive everyone else mad, but ever since they've sort of fallen into one another to the point where Arya's not sure how to cope without Sansa, and she knows it's a mutual thing. Mum always used to say that they were as alike as they were different, and that's why they got it so hard to get along, and it never made sense until it was just them. and Bran and Rickon couldn't understand and Granddad didn't even try. 

They end up with their staffs pressed against the unscarred sides of each other's necks, breathing heavily, sweaty and messy - well, Arya's messy, Sansa's just flushed and has like, three strands of hair hanging prettily around her face and wow, how out of shape is she if she's this out of breath after only a couple of minutes on the mat? - and grinning as if this is all some crazy game.

Nothing has felt like a game in a long time, not to Arya. Nothing has felt like a game since she lost Jon.

"We've seen enough," Lannister says shortly, and Arya steps away. It takes Sansa a second longer, and she seems stunned and kind of dazed as she straightens up and swings her braid back over her shoulder.

The crowd at the back of the room, even the dumb rat-faced guys, clap for them as the Marshals dismiss them. Arya has no idea what it looked like, her sparring with Sansa, but it was fast and it was exhilarating and Sansa did a back handspring and Arya did a somersault and it was the best damn fun she's had in years.

"Can you handle the bot?" she asks as they make their way back to their rooms, elbows locked. They've taken to holding onto one another since they arrived at the 'dome, and Arya wonders if she ever really couldn't stand being in the same room as Sansa, and really hopes Sansa's not just humouring her.

"I will," Sansa promises, and then she ducks down and kisses the top of Arya's head before skipping into her room with a smile.

Arya has plenty to think about, but for now she just gathers up her stuff and heads for the showers. It's easier not to think just yet.

 

* * *

 

They end up hanging around the lab with the K-Science crew. 

Well, she says crew - there are only two of them, sister and brother, Arianne and Quentyn Martell. They fight worse than she and Sansa ever did, but they're mad and brilliant and while the marshals might have to shout at them every five seconds to get them to focus and stop bickering about entraiils, they also respect them and rely on them more than they'd ever admit.

Their father was, until he died six months ago, one of the top Jaegar pilots ever, piloted a Mark II with his brother  _and_ sister until they were taken out by Mountain, which got further inland and took out more people than any other kaiju before or since through sheer refusal to die. Old Doran died of cancer, of course, because he'd piloted a Mark I with his wife before she left him for letting their kids get involved in the programme. 

Arianne has tattoos of kaiju all over her arms and disappearing under her clothes, while Quentyn is like every stereotype scientist from those old movies Mum and Dad used to make them all watch when they were kids in bad, geeky clothes. There's a wide band of striped tape stuck down the middle of the floor, clearly bisecting the lab into organised mathematician's dream (holy shit, where had he even  _gotten_ some of this software, it wasn't supposed to be  _finished_ yet never mind  _released_ ) and nightmarish biologist's orgy.

They aren't the only ones who hung out down there - the Dornish boys do, too, which is kind of to be expected given Trys is Arianne and Quentyn's little brother. He gets along with both of them, and seems the only person who can make _them_ get along. It's nice, down here, because it's cooler than the rest of the 'dome so Arianne's specimens are kept in prime condition, and having people bickering like that feels kind of homely.

And there's nobody down here that looks at Arya and Sansa as if expecting them to be someone else.

Instead, Arya sits on a high stool on Quentyn's side of the lab and offers opinions on his theories - they're fascinating, they really are, he's  _brilliant_ on a level that escapes even Arya's admittedly advanced knowledge of mathematics, he wrote a lot of the newer programming for the Drift mechanisms and she's seen it, it's amazing. She chats about advances in Drift technology and how it's going to help with so many things, so many people.

Sansa has loud, enthusiastic conversations and debates with Arianne about kaiju being clones and how that could be useful, too, and then the marshals - Bryn and Dickhead Lannister, Maege and Old Man Hightower who Arya's never met but who has a reputation even bigger than his voice - stomp in, neat polished shoes and clunky combat boots making just as much noise when there's the weight of the world on those shoulders.

Arianne isn't happy when the marshals choose to go with Quentyn's proposals over hers, and she lets everyone know it, but who the fuck would sincerely want to Drift with a kaiju, even just a little bit of one?

 

* * *

 

Arya suits up the following morning and steps into the Jaegar's conn pod (she hasn't got a name, how can you name something that's three things and a family and nothing), and she stands to the right. Her left arm was damaged in the Event, and even if she hates that she's got to share with some dickhead hotshot from the Academy-

"Do you mind me keeping left? I think it'd suit us both best, really-"

She almost jumps at Sansa and almost shrieks in delight, but that would be undignified and she won't give Gerry asshole Lannister the satisfaction.

And she's maybe a little intimidated by the fact that  _everyone_ is up in the LOCCENT watching, including kind-of-scary Marshal Hightower. That might be influencing just how professional she's being, too. Sansa knows, though, and she winks and locks in on the left.

She might hold out her fist for Sansa to bump. Maybe. But that's pilot bonding, that's hardly unprofessional.

 

* * *

 

The Drift is everything Sansa remembers and completely knew.

Technically, it's the same -  _don't chase the RABIT, the Drift is silence,_ blah blah blah, but this time it's not Dad, it's not the familiar warmth of him in her head, knowing him as well as she knows herself.

She has to fight not to get caught in  _that_ memory. Sticking on the Event might make Arya stick on it, and while Arya might have been unconscious for Jon actually dying, it won't make that much difference - the mental trauma of having a Drift broken like that goes deeper than any of the scientists could possibly know, because none of them have been in that position.

She looks to Arya and sees herself, screaming as Executioner rips Dad from the pod, and it takes Bryn shouting over the mic to pull her back.  _Don't chase the RABIT, don't chase the RABIT, the Drift is silence_ and oh gods that's the inside of an altogether different Jaegar and that's Jon and no Arya wasn't awake for this Arya was _unconscious_ but of course, her and Jon were still connected so this is  _his memory of dying-_

 

* * *

 

"It was my fault," Sansa says. "I slipped out first, it wasn't Arya's fault-"

"I know it wasn't," Gerry Lannister says, and Sansa wants to wring his neck but that's mostly the hangover and coming from Arya. She also wants to cry and run away and scream, but she sits where she is and very firmly does not cry or scream or even particularly react to the marshal's anger. "I know very well who the fault lies with, Ranger, and it lies with myself and my colleagues for allowing you into a damned Jaegar again, given the results of your most recent psychiatric evaluations as compared with your sisters."

She sits, and she takes it. There's nothing else she can do. She doesn't even flinch, not even when Arya begins to argue.

All she does is ask to be dismissed, which is a tiny boon Gerry Lannister in all his righteous anger permits her.

She sits on the steps of the room opposite to wait for Arya, who stays inside shouting at Marshal Lannister and Bryn.

She doesn't even notice Dacey coming to sit by her until she's there, with her arm through around Sansa's shoulders.

"It happens to the best of us," she says. "The Old Man's not saying a word because it happened to him, and Mum gets it too, she was the same when Uncle Jeor died."

Sansa shrugs. "I tripped Arya out, though, it's only fair that I'm the one who's punished-"

"There's no one else fit to pilot with her," Dacey points out. "Me and Aly were at the trials, Sansa, you two fight like we do, you-"

The door slams open and Arya storms out, red-faced and furious, and Sansa knows well enough to leave her be for now.

 

* * *

 

She's running through her forms when Bryn comes into the practice room, and he just stands there watching her.

It annoys her so much that she slams her staff into the nearest mirror, and doesn't bother stepping away to avoid the shards of glass that now litter the floor.

She's not even angry anymore, just resigned - everything's been shit since that first kaiju crawled out of the sea, absolutely everything, and she's sick to death of it all and just wants it to be over. 

"You're going to cut your feet," Bryn says, crunching across the glass and handing her her boots. "There's signatures been detected at the Breach."

"Oh, wonderful- wait,  _signatures?"_

Bryn doesn't object to her wrinkling his fancy dress uniform when she grabs hold of him to keep her balance. 

"Quentyn's model is  _right_ ," she says, horrified. "Bryn, if his model is  _entirely_ right then you're going to need-"

"No," he says. "I've conferred with the others and we've agreed that you are grounded for now, Arya. I'm sorry, but-"

"If Quent's models are correct then these kaiju are not only coming in multiples but also  _growing_ , Bryn, please, you need Aurora for the drop so you can't risk her, and two Jaegars aren't going to be enough, especially not if these two things are  _bigger,_ Brynden, please-"

"No," he says, and she knows that there's nothing to be done.

Nothing to be done until all three of the other Jaegar are deployed and, because Aurora's got to hold the Miracle Mile and they  _need_ her safe, and then suddenly Leatherback, the big, uglier kaiju, is crushing Rising Damp and the Greyjoys into the bay, and  _"Brynden Tully so help me I will tell Pappy and he will have your balls for letting Lannisport be destroyed,"_ and everyone's looking at Sansa as if she's grown a second head.

And then the Drift is quiet, and Lannisport is screaming.

Sharing the Drift with Sansa feels like home.

 

* * *

 

Fighting with Arya is nothing like it was with Dad - she's much more technical, much quicker and sharper and probably, really,  _better_ than he was.

It's like putting on her favourite boots, the brown leather ones that Bran got her three birthdays ago, because it fits so easily she could almost cry if she wasn't slightly worried that tears wouldn't mix too well with all the circuitry and electrics in her suit.

Leatherback is huge - thick limbed and broad shouldered and  _bulky_ , and too big for them to lift so they have to grind it down, wear it out before they're worn out ( _have to win, Damp is gone and Kodiak's out and we can't risk Aurora),_ and Sansa just lets Arya take the lead. She's glad she kept as fit as Arya did while they were away, albeit in different ways - Arya with her kickboxing and all her other martial arts, as well as the refits on the house and those cars she built from scratch, Sansa with dancing and gymnastics and running around after Rickon and hockey - because she needs it, to keep up with the moves in Arya's mind.

She manages it, though. Her lungs are burning because she wants to cough so badly, but she manages it and she even manages to help with something more than sharing the load,  _"There's a weak spot, right behind the skull plate!"_ and Arya manages to hook her arm around the neck frill and lodge half a clip in the bastard (that's from Arya, just like that shouted threat to Bryn was hangover from Arya, Sansa's fairly sure of that).

The other one - she didn't hear the name and doesn't give a shit, although it's apparently Otachi, another Ibbenese word - proves harder. It's taller and a  _lot_ faster, and it spits and has a stabby tail and shit, coolant? Why does Arya want her to vent the coolant  _oh my gods it froze the thing's tail she's brilliant_ _._

But then it has wings, and Sansa can't breathe for how relieved she is that they kept the sword in Lady's arm ( _Dad always talked about Ice but I never saw it deployed_ , she senses more than hears from Arya).

Falling feels kind of like flying, at least until everyone down in the LOCCENT starts screaming over the coms for them to do this, do that, and Arya swears back in blinding technicolour that she knows how to pilot her own damned Jaegar,  _sirs._  

Maege's laughter echoes right back to them as they slam down in the middle of the biggest park in Lannisport, the old tourny grounds, and Sansa can't talk she needs to cough so badly but she  _can_ smile, because they _won_.

 

* * *

 

They have about fifteen hours before they're to hit for the Breach. Dacey's leg was broken in the fight which means Kodiak only has one pilot, and the Greyjoys are dead and...

Sansa really hopes Arya didn't see the blood. She really,  _really_  hopes that nobody saw it, but of course that's a futile hope.

"Lady was a Mark I," she says, leaning over the sink and watching the red run away with the water. "Dad warned me, and I took the meds, but... There's only so much medicine can do, really."

Marshal Gerion Lannister looks almost as sad as Sansa feels.

"This is why you didn't push to rejoin the programme," he says. "Why you didn't push to pilot with your sister."

"I wanted to make certain at least one of us gets home to our brothers," she agrees. "Granddad's a mess, the boys need someone to look after them, and Arya's always been better suited to this life than I was." She laughs at that. "Dad's brother died of lung cancer too - seems like it runs in the family."

That makes her laugh too, because everyone always told her that she was a Tully more than a Stark.

"You can't let my sister know," she says. "This is why- there has to be some way to keep her out of the Jaegar, sir. I'm already dying, I can pilot the bot-"

"You didn't name her," he says quietly. "You and your sister piloted an unnamed Jaegar, Ranger Stark - nobody's ever done that before."

"Sir?"

"You can't ride with anyone else, Sansa," he says, rubbing his hands over his face and suddenly looking very old. "Your sister is a better pilot than you. We need her more than we need you, and she  _won't_ ride with anyone else."

 

* * *

 

Nobody's entirely sure how to react when Maege Mormont arrives on deck in her flightsuit.

"More flattering than the old ones," she says with a grin, before Aly and Dacey tug her urgently off to one side (Arya wonders, for a second, where Jory and the others are - are they still back home on Bear Island?). 

"You ready for this?" Sansa says, squeezing her hand and smiling. "The big one."

Arya can't help but smile - who ever thought she'd be saving the world with  _Sansa_ of all people? - and squeeze back.

"Let's do this."

 

* * *

 

Sansa doesn't know what size the warhead strapped to Aurora's back is, but it's big - and the two kaiju hanging out at the Breach are bigger. 

"Fucking hells," Arya breathes, "which one do you think we'll get to kill?"

It's a mess - they can't see the kaiju until they're right on top of them, and the damn things seem to sense that Aurora's the one they need to take out the most because they go straight for her, and there's a moment of abject terror when it looks like her plasma rockets aren't going to work underwater.

Kodiak goes down fighting, and takes one of the bastards with her - Maege and Aly shut off their coms so nobody has to hear them drown.

And then the Breach sparks again.

"What Category?" Sansa hears Trys ask, even though they know the answer already - it's  _so_ big, like nothing any of them have ever seen before, how...

"Category Five," and Bryn's voice is strained. 

Sansa looks to Arya.

"Boys?" she says. "We'll take the Four, then distract the Five while you go for the Breach. Sound fair?"

 

* * *

 

The plan might have been fair, but it didn't work out because the Five ( _Slattern,_ where did they come up with these fucking names) is fast and clever and fucking huge.

And then Quent and Arianne are on the coms, shouting that the plan won't work because you need kaiju DNA to get through the Breach, and Sansa's mind flashes in a pattern that Arya can't quite puzzle out but-

The second Cat IV goes down but takes Ice, their left arm and the mechanics of their left knee with it, and then Ned's on the coms.

_"You'd better fucking write an amazing fucking obituary for me, Stark."_

Arya wraps their good arm around the nearest rock and refuses to cry as Aurora disappears in a sunbright starburst. Ned and Trys are friends of hers, have been for years, she was at the Academy with them, but she can't cry because her and Sansa are riding on top of a nuclear reactor and they have a handy kaiju corpse and a Breach to seal.

Arya's running low on oxygen, but she can do this. They can do this.

 

* * *

 

Sansa clicks her oxygen supply into Arya's and then initiates the ejection protocol.

"Look after the boys for me," she whispers as Arya shoots skyward. This is the strangest place she's ever been, even counting the inside of her own head, and she really hopes Arya doesn't remember it. 

She closes her eyes as the countdown starts - her oxygen's just run out, and her lungs are aching, have been for ages now anyways.

"Kind of like flying," she whispers.


End file.
